I see a lot of talk in forums about quitters, disconnections and ‘undeserved’ banhammers, and I’ve come up with a possible solution that would be much fairer for all involved, as well as removing most of the positives gained from quitting from matches.
I’m assuming that the system can tell whether you quit the match (using the in-match menu), were booted for inactivity, lost connection completely (or disconnected yourself intentionally/quit to dashboard/turned off xbox) and are no longer connected to Halo at all, or just lost your connection to the server and got booted back to the lobby.
If you quit, were booted for inactivity, or lost connection completely, the match is counted as a loss and you get a negative K/D added to your stats (say 0/10 or even more), and receive a 12 min ban (the length of a standard match) regardless of how long the match had remaining. This would make quitting or intentionally disconnecting to the game pointless
You still earn a loss, still get a negative K/D, and you have to wait longer to get a new match than if you had just finished the one you were in, which would cover most of the reasons people leave matches on purpose.
If it wasn’t intentional and your internet was to blame (or a pet/child brushed against the power button on your xbox, lol I’ve had that happen), that’s unfortunate but would be relatively uncommon anyway, and there would be no way to tell whether it was intentional or not.
For the rest of the people in the match, the game is ended and players are returned to the lobby, and either a new player is found and a new match is started, or matchmaking just starts searching for a completely new match. All players have the stats/medals they had at the point the player left added to their record, and the team that was in the lead earns a win, but the team that was behind does not earn a loss.
On the other hand, if it was a server disconnection and you were booted back to the lobby, you are automatically reconnected, and rejoin the match in progress with the stats/medals you already had when you were disconnected.
The way I see it, a system like this would stop a lot of quitting, since you would still earn a loss, still get a negative K/D, and will have to wait longer for a new match than if they had just completed the one they were in.
It will be better for people left in a match when a player leaves, either the match will end or the player will be returned to the match, there would be no more being stuck finishing a match with uneven teams.
And it will be a lot more fair for people who were dropped because of server problems get to return to the match and finish it, which is especially good if you were playing in a fireteam with friends; you won’t be stuck waiting in the lobby for them to finish the match.
I’m certainly no expert on how this whole system works, and what is or isn’t possible, but surely something like this could be put in place.
Leave feedback with any changes you would make, or any reasons you don’t think this would be good or why it wouldn’t work. If you think this is a good idea, please hit the like button, hopefully we can bring it to 343’s attention.